October 25, 2012 11:31pm EDTOctober 25, 2012 9:28pm EDTDavid Stern will serve three decades as NBA commissioner, now that his official departure is set for 2014. Lisa Olson looks at the many faces of Stern: fast-talking lawyer, visionary, egoistic executive, power broker.

Shortly after it was announced that in one year, three months and seven days David Stern’s omnipotent reign over the National Basketball Association would come to an end—obituary writers should get this much notice—I headed over to the Twitter page of Metta World Peace to read his reaction.

World Peace figured to have some colorful, maybe even poignant thoughts about this development, even though Stern’s retirement plans hardly came as a shock considering he is 70, and there aren’t many more ways he can tinker with a league he elevated from the muck.

Alas, World Peace was too busy pushing his Halloween party to pay much notice. That seemed to be the general reaction in and around the sport—nods, shrugs, some satisfied grunts from fans who can list the ways Stern messed up their sorry lives, and lots of high-fives from agents, media types, sponsors and union officials who experienced his smug arrogance over the years.

There will be plenty of opportunities throughout Stern’s 15-month farewell tour to digest his legacy. Frozen envelope jokes, Chris Paul ruminations and crooked refs all figure to appear large on the running loop. Stern’s Napoleonic complex will be examined, his sway over two major player lockouts scrutinized all while basketball fans in Seattle continue to poke needles at dolls made to resemble the commish.

His last 15 years as headmaster do teem with controversy. (Provided you can see past the glare of global growth so tremendous and lucrative for all involved, and more on that anon.)

But those first 15? Stern ought to still be taking victory laps for the way he got the NBA to reverse course. In hoop lingo, he stole an inbounds pass, dribbled through the legs of every defender, slam-dunked the ball, hung on the rim and then married the prettiest cheerleader.

Stern was a fast-talking attorney when he inherited an awful mess in 1984. The sport was populated by a bunch of druggies, the league thought to be too urban, too thug—in other words, too black in the eyes of much of America and sponsors who preferred athletes a certain shade.

When he stepped to the podium to emcee his first draft—half his luck, it only featured the greatest collection of talent in history, Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, John Stockton and, wink, Sam Bowie—the mustachioed Stern even then had a bit of swagger.

“I tried to keep it all in perspective," Stern said. "As soon as I became commissioner that February, Dan Patrick, who was the CNN anchor then, said, “We’re going out on the street to ask people if they know who David Stern is.” And he asked them whether I was the violinist (Isaac) Stern, or the radio shock jock (Howard) Stern, and they didn’t know. They had no idea. After that public humiliation, I knew my place. And then I was on a talk radio debate with Art Rust Jr., an African-American, who did a show asking whether the NBA was too black. So I was battle tested. Maybe I was still nervous in front of a lot of people. But I just kept thinking the camera there was showing us to an audience of about zero back then."

The cameras now shine on sparkly courts in China, where basketball thrives; they zoom in on fresh talent in Ukraine, in Lithuania, or down in Melbourne and over to Cape Town. Stern’s fingerprints are all over basketball’s overtaking of the planet.

“I’m just a nebbish Jewish boy from Jersey,” he told me with a smile years ago in Sydney, as we sat in the stands of a suburban stadium and listened to the rhythmic thumps of basketball practice.

“This,” he said then, opening his hands like a preacher to his flock, “is what I dreamed. Being able to go any place in the world and see kids playing basketball.”

Critics will shout that most any fool could have succeeded in an era that featured Jordan, Larry and Magic. More recently Stern’s league suffered a brutal public beating when games were canceled and fans turned bitter after the 2011 lockout in which the commissioner was viewed as losing control over the hardline owners.

But look at Stern's baby now: NBA ratings and attendance spiked last year despite the fickle play brought about by the condensed schedule. The league's revenues are projected to veer toward $5 billion this season, fortified by heavy ticket sales, TV deals (NBA games can be seen in 215 countries and territories) and global business initiatives that cross digital and traditional platforms. Stern saw the benefits of social media long before most of his peers realized their thumbs are there to tweet.

Toward the end of Thursday’s soon-I’ll-retire announcement, Stern turned the stage into a karaoke gig and belted out his best Frank Sinatra. “Regrets, I have a few,” he sang, and no doubt, for three decades he sure has done it his way.

Appropriately, Adam Silver, the man who for years has been sitting to the right side of Stern, finished his boss’s croon.

“Too few to mention,” interjected Silver, who will become commissioner on Feb. 1, 2014, exactly 30 years to the day Stern was plucked to transform and shake up the league.

At times throughout the seasons his ego became a farcical sideshow, outshining the great game itself. There was his mandatory dress code, an edict players viewed as a paternalistic slap at their hip-hop wardrobe. Stern was difficult to budge on the league’s age limit, seen as a violation to free-market practices by some and downright racist by a few.

While the players fought for the right to express their thoughts freely and without penalty, Stern’s inner id had little restraint. As the last labor storms swirled, Stern famously said during a meeting between players and executives that he knew “where the bodies are buried,” because he had buried a few of them himself.

People who were there still grow wide-eyed when they repeat that story, for it framed Stern’s hubris, the depth of his vindictive streak.

By the end of Thursday there still was no word from World Peace. The Lakers’ bon vivant must have been tied up promoting the Lifetime movie he’s made with Nancy Grace, and there’s a line nobody ever could have predicted when Stern first came aboard and began to clean out the cobwebs of a sport that had done a dangerous fade from the public psyche.

But from different corners tributes began to flow, with Magic Johnson and others heralding Stern as the greatest commissioner ever. Given what he began with and where he ends, they aren’t wrong. Stern’s time at the top was so layered, so influential on levels stretching across financial and cultural paradigms, even the cocky lawyer couldn’t sufficiently put a stamp on it.

He did say this: "Life is a journey, and it's been a spectacular journey. And each step along the way, there are things you have to do, things you wish you maybe hadn't done. But I don't keep that list.”

And this: “The league is in terrific condition." It’s darn near impossible to argue that one.